BooksBarbecue
Back Trinity Sight Save as PDF
Chapters (41)
  1. PART ONE
  2. ONE
  3. TWO
  4. THREE
  5. FOUR
  6. FIVE
  7. SIX
  8. SEVEN
  9. EIGHT
  10. NINE
  11. TEN
  12. ELEVEN
  13. TWELVE
  14. THIRTEEN
  15. FOURTEEN
  16. FIFTEEN
  17. PART TWO
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. TWENTY-FOUR
  27. TWENTY-FIVE
  28. TWENTY-SIX
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. TWENTY-NINE
  32. PART THREE
  33. THIRTY
  34. THIRTY-ONE
  35. THIRTY-TWO
  36. THIRTY-THREE
  37. THIRTY-FOUR
  38. THIRTY-FIVE
  39. THIRTY-SIX
  40. THIRTY-SEVEN
  41. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“Hold Eunjoo,” Calliope answered, and stepped into the icy water. A shock of cold seeped through her boots and sweats, instantly numbing her legs and sending veins of ice-pain up her thighs and into her pelvis. She trudged forward, pushing her body against the rushing force, conjuring Phoenix with everything inside of her. I’m coming, baby. I’m almost there.

“Ay, mujer,” Chance murmured, hoisting Eunjoo upon his shoulders again, and following Calliope into the arroyo.

On the other side, her body was shuddering, her bottom half soaked and freezing in the ice-wind. She tried running, couldn’t. Moved haltingly, and when Chance emerged from the water, he helped her forward.

As they approached the front porch Calliope’s chest thudded along with their boots tramping wetly up the steps, littered with grayish white she thought at first was snowflakes then realized was dead moths. She turned the doorknob.

A gunshot pierced the air.

Two images flashed through her mind. Susana in the hay. And Chance’s wailing bone.

PART TWO

PART TWO

FIRST PEOPLES

“A line of stories has followed us to this present moment …

All that is left is for us to record these images, these voices,

so that those who follow in our footsteps may meet …

the source from which we have all been birthed.”

VANISHING VOICES

SIXTEEN

SIXTEEN

EMERGENCE

What was happening in the world hadn’t come yet. Hadn’t come to Calliope. The ceasefire fails, how the world didn’t truly want freedom—at least it didn’t seem that way to those in the rubble, amidst the water cannons and blizzards and roadblocks, amidst the genocide of the Ancients. It was always coming, she knew. The country had been scrubbed of science and common sense, so she’d planned with Andres: in the occasion of the roundup they’d threatened, the wall they were building, the explosion of another pipeline, the droughts-turned-floods devastating the states, he would stay behind and give medical attention, and she would flee with Phoenix to her tía’s.

She hadn’t shut out the horror. She’d sent supplies bought on Amazon: heat lamps and emergency Mylar thermal blankets, thick wool socks, waterproof parkas, milk of magnesia, buffalo jerky, water pouches. But she’d had fossils to sort in the lab, notes to jot, classes to teach. The world broke in segments, as a piece of bone at the joints. Her piece of world-bone had still been intact. How could she, pregnant, with a mortgage, seeking tenure, gallivant toward danger to hold the lines? Though she sympathized, though the news each night churned her gut and she saw Phoenix’s face on every child’s, she did not get involved.